Best Fake Tales of San Francisco, pt.4: The Crush Party or "Pictures of ME!"

After the parade, all of San Francisco seemed still, but much was afoot, as a Crush Party was coming together in San Jose.


Sorry, you don't get to see the video of Betsy and Becca singing "The Promise", you just get this picture. Oh, you wish you could see the video.


Brigham Barnes as photographed by Juergen Teller.


Just about ready to go party.


If you think this picture looks odd . . .


Wait until you see this one.


All right. Now, let's go party.


Like I was kind of saying, Jared and Karen Rusten were throwing their annual Valentine's Day Crush Party down in San Jose.


What do you do at a Crush party? Well, for starters, you drink Crush


And eat bruschettas


And get really excited!
(My Crush consumption for the Night: 2 Grape, 1 Strawberry, 2 Waters.)


This is Andy. He was a cool dude.


This dude, also cool. And it's a shame I forgot his name. UPDATE Turns out his name is Greg. I should be able to remember that.


Remember what I said a few posts ago about Betsy and self-portraits?


At the party there was a viking. This had to do with some sort of internet joke, I think. Still, I can appreciate the sight of a viking without knowing the underlying nuances.


Caroline and crew made the scene.


Viking, sans beard. Betsy, sans self-portrait.


These guys were cool dudes. Me too.


Just when I thought the party couldn't get any awesomer who shows up but Mr. Grant Porter!! What? What? It was off the hook!!


One of the main features of the Crush party was Karen's quite professional photo sessions. In a few days maybe I'll have some of her amazing portraits up


But here's a behind the scenes look at what went down


The portraits all looked something like this, but better.


It was a well organized party, with various competitions . . .


And performances. Here Jared's brother beat boxes


And cool dude Greg plays the guitar


I told some stories about Jared and New York and stuff


It was only mildly disgraceful


This is what it looked like from the back


Half the fun of obsessive photographing is checking your shots half way through the night. Also, all competitors and performers won prizes, that birded serving tray was my prize.


Karen's party energy stayed strong all night.


Everyone was fighting for a little one on one time with the Rustens. Here I get mine, and then some


There were also post card and patches for prizes, they sort of got thrown on the floor


When Grant and company took off a piece of the party died.


At around 1 some of us slipped away to check out Jared's furniture studio.


It's by the stadium in San Jose, so Jared has to deal with improper parkers


Jared gave us a tour of the shop and we all learned about furniture making and studio owning. Wait, maybe we weren't at Jared's studio, maybe we were at his shop?







Jared thrilled us with the sharpness of his Japanese-made tools. As you may or may not be able to see here, he shaved a bit of his arm with his, uh, his . . . you know, that one tool. The sharp one.


He also told us the tale of the rolls of paper he found that turned out to be plans for stained glass windows.


They made good window coverings whose religious themes have been effective in discouraging crack heads from breaking into the shop . . . or studio.



And that was the Crush party.

Next Time: Lazy Sunday and a Troublesome Flight Home.